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Comments:IBM to construct supercomputer capable of running entire Internet

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Latest comment: 16 years ago by 66.102.80.246

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Skynet

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It is certainly no skynet, because it lacks AI, but the moral of the story is the same: by centralizing the internet you are leaving it vulnerable to accidents or worse, corporate takeover.Rekov - (talk) 14:31, 24 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

This defeats the entire point of the internet. It was originally designed as a military communications system, and its form as a network of thousands of nodes is so that communications can continue in the case of a nuclear attack where many nodes would be destroyed. Spacehusky - (talk) 14:41, 24 February 2008 (UTC)Reply
We must destroy this computer before it destroys the freedoms granted by the internet. Our path is clear. For the good of humanity, Kittyhawk must be destroyed.Rekov - (talk) 16:47, 24 February 2008 (UTC)Reply
Oh boy. Let's start the paranoia bandwagon. The Internet vulnerable to "accidents"? What kind of accidents? Someone kicks the plug out from under Kittyhawk and the Internet is taken down? I believe Mark Cuban once did that while he was running the old AudioNet website. Or maybe Jack Black will erase the whole Internet like in the film Be Kind Reward? And as for the evil (play ominous music here) corporate takeover, aren't the Internet's most popular sites already besieged by advertising?
And comparing this thing to SkyNet is laughable. SkyNet ran defense systems in the movies. IfT you're dumb enough to run your defense system using Microsoft Office Live, well, that's all she wrote. What would Kittyhawk run? Youtube videos of teenagers lip syncing to pop songs?
The bottom line is, just because there's a computer being developed that can run the Internet as application doesn't mean that the whole Internet is going to be centralized. If it would be, it would cease to be the Internet as it is currently defined. It's more than likely that despite its Wright Brothers hinting name, this Kittyhawk technology will end up just like other IBM technology - largely unused or otherwise repurposed for some other activity. Kittyhawk may one day be able to run the Internet as application software, but neither it nor no one group of people can publish the meaningful content that makes the Internet increasingly important. The structure of the Internet has benefits for both corporations and individuals, and it's something neither would give up. Jtalledo - (talk) 11:53, 25 February 2008 (UTC)Reply
Im not saying that people will give up decentralized internet. What if IBM decided that people should have to pay extra for internet access, and even more for uncensored internet. IBM will decide which websites can be visited and which ones can't. This is unacceptable. Rekov - (talk) 12:04, 25 February 2008 (UTC)Reply
You are the most awesome troll ever. Thank you for your contributions to intellectual thought. 66.102.80.246 01:29, 26 February 2008 (UTC)Reply
I'd love to see the bit of subterfuge you seem to believe IBM will do if they ever manage to make a capable system. They're, what, going to somehow... download the entire Internet? And then just magically delete the decentralised original? Come on, be reasonable. They're researching a way to build a supercomputer that could theoretically host a large network of services such as the internet. Perhaps it will prove to be a better way of hosting websites than having many separate servers, and perhaps - if they ever make it production-ready - they will host live services on it. Potentially a lot of live services. That doesn't mean they're going to actually replace the Internet. That doesn't make any sense! How could you possibly think anyone could centralise the Internet just like that? Nobody owns it, nobody has all of it, nobody could archive it all. Kittyhawk is a research project, not a hostile takeover of the Internet. Just think about how much the infrastructure would have to change for it to be even vaguely plausible.

What can I say about this

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Well this computer may not be able to run everything but what it could do is help the internet as a node for the whole system. This computer could help run the internet, it could act as a massive server and aleviater some of the prblems that are assoicated with bandwith. I hope we can get more of these computer online.

wow!

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this sounds promising!